i have a question... Paramedic School Without Street Experience

[JPINFV]

OP- who cares, judging by your avatar you only want to work in the FD. So just go spend $10k at NCTI and get your p card. Meanwhile go work in the construction industury you will make more money than an ambulance job and learn more applicable skills than some ambulance profession

 

[Aidey]

I would imagine that they're not put in a classroom environment first and then dropped into a field training environment where they're suddenly faced with a very steep learning curve and a short time-span to learn the basics of being a provider at that level... I would suspect that they're given a certain amount of education and trained gradually with increasing expectation and responsibility throughout the entire program.

I'd imagine that Physicians are generally brought up in a relatively similar manner. They get some didactic stuff first and are gradually introduced to their responsibilities.

Heck, even Jedi don't normally just spend a few hours with Yoda and suddenly are deemed worthy... (Luke was the exception) they're supposed to be trained from almost birth and takes what, 15-19 years to become a Jedi Knight?

If a zero-to-hero Paramedic program was built along the same lines, by the end of the program, the resulting Paramedics could be as "good" as any other graduate from any other good program.

Of course the downside of any zero-to-hero program is that the students might just find out too late that they really don't like that profession...

I've never gone to nursing school or medical school, but I have looked into nursing school. It appears that in many programs the students initially spend a certain amount of time in the classroom and then the patient contact time starts.

This was pretty much exactly how my medic program was. We spent 6-8 weeks going over the stuff we needed to know in order to function in the hospital, and then built on both from there.

 

[Aidey]

First off, that's exactly what I'm saying. A well-designed zero-to-hero program will turn out good, competent providers that won't need any experience going into the program.

I was recently poking around the website for my paramedic program, which is university run. When I went through it, it was pretty new and still somewhat disorganized. Looking at it now, it is in much better shape. They appear to have two paths to admission depending on prior experience.

They have a "Zero to hero" path that involves 2 semesters of pre-reqs prior to the actual paramedic program. First semester you take EMT B along with the general ED stuff, like English and Math. Second semester you finish up the general ED requirements and take A&P. There is a 3 credit "EMT B Internship" class that they state is to specifically prepare new EMTs for entry into the paramedic program. After that is the 3 semester program it self (the 3rd semester is a summer semester).

Honestly, I don't have a program with that. Overall it is almost identical to the 2 year* ASN program offered. The only difference is that the ASN program is 4 semesters, rather than 3.


* It is officially called a 2 year program, but it also has the same 2 semesters of pre-reqs, so it is really 3.

 

[fast65]

Not gonna lie, I lol'd